On my Downtime

I stupidly acquired some sort of spyware on my laptop of which I do all my home based work and game time on. I'm pretty sure I got it from clicking on someone's link to a WoL report on their application to our guild and I am not sure how my anti-virus programs did not pick it up. (note - I am in no way suggesting that WoL contains malware of any sort, just relaying that I might have been linked to some sort of phising site instead.)


My Hotmail and various other software started to go wonky on me and all 200 something of my personal and professional contacts received a lovely email four nights ago asking them to come join me on some sort of social network. My game frame rates have been awful since then and I had to intentionally change my spec to include Body and Soul for Sindragosa solely because I would freeze up for about 2 seconds as she pulled us in and I would ALWAYS miss running out. Fun times.

So I made the decision to move to Windows 7 and I am just finishing up with my Warcraft install now on disc 2 of Vanilla. Boy, is my PC now moving at lightening speed. I am by no means an IT expert - I leave that up to my husband - but I have to say after using XP, Vista and now 7 I have to say Vista is the laggist out of the three and and a huge memory hog.

My basic setup took less than a half hour to do - with Vista that wasn't even close to the case with all the permission stops.

In any case, sitting here waiting for (now) disc 3 to finish, it made me think of how important having a proper setup to for Warcraft endgame play is. If I wasn't in an endgame progression raiding guild I wouldn't have cared that I had to change my spec to ensure that I got out of Blistering Cold. To me it made a huge difference and really got my goat that I had to. If I didn't have so much crap on my PC I wouldn't have locked up for a few seconds ensuring my demise each time it was cast.

I never understood until now why players would complain on the customer support forums that their latency went up by a 30 or 40. It all about getting that extra in edge play - allowing you react faster and better to every situation.

The Sindragosa fight is very unforgiving in that matter. As I found out, having less than stellar reaction times, whether due to PC or personal ability, means death or a wipe. I for one am happy I've moved to a better operating system and have decided to buy an external harddrive for my laptop to house everything else (My personal and professional photos, financials, etc.) so that I can free up as much space I need to ensure top performance from my not so stellar laptop.

Anyway, with the downtime I have tonight (and only being on disc 5 of Vanilla, sigh) I believe one of my new goals for 2010 is researching every way I can push as much perfomance out of my game play as possible. Whether that is computer performance, play technique or toon wise - I vow to do better in game. I do already spend quite a lot of time optimizing my priest for raiding but I probably have been neglecting points one and two somewhat. I plan on giving some well needed attention to them both.

That's it for now! Time for Burning Crusade and maybe a movie!